Brawl Stars
Brawl Stars is a freemium multiplayer mobile arena fighter/party brawler/shoot 'em up video game developed and published by Supercell.6 In Brawl Stars, players are ranked by their level and total trophies. Players collect brawlers and select one to use each game. Brawl Boxes, which are loot chests containing coins, brawlers, and Power Points (used to level up brawlers), can be obtained with Tokens earned by playing matches. Big Boxes can be obtained by using gems or 10 Star tokens (earned by winning the first match in a map). After 500 trophies of a brawler, at the end of a season the trophies of brawlers reduce by 50%. The total trophies of the player are not reduced, however. Players can join clubs to play alongside other players. Players can also create their own club by spending gems. Gameplay Brawl Stars is centered around shooting other players or, in some cases, AI opponents to bring down their health and defeat them. Players can choose between several brawlers, each with their own main attacks and Super attacks, ranging from shotgun attacks (such as Shelly's) to pistol attacks (such as Colt's). Main attacks reload over time, and supers charge by attacking others and are often more powerful. Each brawler also has an unlockable passive ability called a Star Bonus that can be found in Brawl Boxes (the game's loot chests) once the brawler is at maximum level. Screenshot of gameplay in the "Bounty" mode Brawl Stars provides seven non-ticketed events (Bounty, Brawl Ball, Gem Grab, Heist, Solo Showdown, Duo Showdown, Siege) and three ticketed events (Robo Rumble, Boss Fight, Big Game), totaling to 10 unique game modes.7 With event modifiers, which introduce special mechanics to Showdown, it creates a variety of ways the Showdown game mode can be played.8 Ticketed Events: Robo Rumble: Three brawlers defend a safe in the middle of the map against an ever growing onslaught of robots for as long as they can. Boss Fight: Three brawlers fight against a massive robot with lots of hit points and attempt to destroy it before it gets stronger. Each time the boss gets beaten, it moves on to increasingly powerful stages which makes it harder to beat. Big Game: Five brawlers fight against one “Big brawler” who moves faster, reloads faster, deals more damage, and has much more health than the others. The objective for the fighters is to take the big brawler down as fast as possible, while the big brawler tries to survive as long as possible. Non-Ticketed Events: Bounty: Three brawlers on each team try to get as many stars as possible. Stars are gained by getting kills or by grabbing the one in the center. If someone gets a kill, one more star gets added to their bounty, with the default at two stars. When they die, they give the amount of stars they are worth to the enemy team and respawn after a few seconds. Brawl Ball: Three brawlers on each team attempt to score more goals than the other team. If a team has two goals, they win the game. If time runs out and a team has one goal but the other has zero, then they win. If they are tied, they go into the final stage, called overtime. At the end of overtime it is an official tie. Players can respawn in this mode. Gem Grab: Three brawlers on each team try to capture gems. In the center of the map, there is a gem mine that spawns gems every seven seconds. Gems picked up by players are dropped when they are defeated, and player can respawn in this mode. If a team picks up ten gems from the mine, a fifteen second countdown starts. If the team still has more than ten gems, and more gems than their opponents, the clock keeps running. If the clock hits zero, whoever has the most gems wins. Heist: Three brawlers on each team try to destroy the other team’s safe. Whichever team destroys the others’ safe first wins. It is a tie if they are destroyed at the same time (which is very rare), or if each safe has the same percentage after the game timer runs out. In this mode, players respawn until one team wins. Showdown: Ten brawlers (or five teams in duos) face off agains each other, with the last one to survive winning the match. If someone dies, they are eliminated in solo and respawn after several seconds in duo. If both brawlers on a duo team die, they are eliminated. Showdown also has power cubes, which add strength to brawlers. Power cubes can be found in breakable boxes, spread across the map. Siege: Three brawlers on each team try to destroy the others’ IKE turret. The IKE will shoot the other team's closest players if they are in a demarcated boundary. One way to destroy the turret is by using a robot. A robot is spawned in the back of the map, heading towards the opposing team’s IKE turret. It’s main purpose is to block damage from the IKE turret so it can be damaged by the brawlers. The robot is spawned for whichever team has the most bolts before each siege. Bolts are spawned near the center of the map and are collected by the brawlers. Development and release On June 14, 2017, Supercell announced the game via a livestream video on YouTube. It received an iOS soft launch in the Canadian App Store the following day, June 15, 2017. The game was made available in Canada, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao and Malaysia App Stores on January 19, 2018. On June 26, 2018, Android received access to the game as a continuation of the soft launch. On November 14, 2018, Supercell announced its global launch on a YouTube stream.9 The game was released globally on December 12, 2018,10 and made more than $63 million in its first month.11 Esports In 2019 Red Bull hosted a Brawl Stars tournament that required each team to have a YouTube content creator. The finals were held on February 2, 2019.12 Brawlers Brawlers come in 7 rarity types: Starting Brawlers, Trophy Road Rewards, Rare, Super Rare, Epic, Mythic, and Legendary. As of May 22, 2019, there are 28 brawlers in the game, those being one Starting Brawler, seven Trophy Road Reward Brawlers, four Rare Brawlers, four Super Rare Brawlers, four Epic Brawlers, three Mythic Brawlers and three Legendary Brawlers. Players can unlock brawlers from Brawl Boxes, Big Boxes or Mega Boxes (with the exception of Trophy Road Reward Brawlers, which are acquired via gaining trophies), which one can get from tokens or gems. Reception Awardsedit The game was nominated for "Mobile Game" and "EE Mobile Game of the Year" at the 15th British Academy Games Awards.13